


soft focus_☾

by unnagi



Series: moonlight, rain, you. [4]
Category: Joker Game (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, M/M, POV First Person, Surreal, continues from 'singing'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 01:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17715815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnagi/pseuds/unnagi
Summary: I just wanted to see him - that’s all it boiled down to. Feel his light, feel his shadow...





	soft focus_☾

**Author's Note:**

> hi ! maybe i just love kaminaga 1st person so i have no excuse ...i wud say this is very kaminaga-focused ! also it continues from another fic, 'singing'!

**soft focus_☾**

_soft focus: due to flaws in the camera lens used, the resulting image shows slight blurring especially around areas of concentrated light. directors have taken advantage of these lenses to produce a dreamy look in films._

 

 

i

The old fluorescent tubes uncle had installed on the ceiling of the darkroom shined a cold, bleak light - I had been used to it until she complained that time. It’s kind of cruel, she had said, bowing down to scrutinise the workspace as though she was using a magnifying glass. So I switched off the fluorescents and turned on the safelight. The room was bathed in complete darkness for a moment, before an amber light presumed in front of us.

 

Someone had mailed over six rolls of film that day, they wanted it processed and printed as soon as possible. I guess I didn’t feel like doing the work, so I took her upstairs. The clock read seven p.m, the rest of the world began to fade as she smoked on the balcony, watching the sky bleed while I thought about those fluorescent tubes.

 

The two rooms downstairs were originally uncle’s own photo lab. There were no windows, and every compartment could be made completely dark when the lights were off. But you only ever really need to do that when transferring film from the original canister to a developing tank. The rest of the time a safelight is good enough. Uncle had used one room as a study and the other as his office, with a sink, an array of trays for chemical baths and an enlarger for printing. I had been following the same procedure when he left the place to me, more or less. Of course, there was no doubt that I had been doing the same thing for far too long…which was why I didn’t get it when she said she liked me because I was free.

 

“Kazuo,” I could hear her call me now. She had a soft, rusty kind of voice, like rain falling on dry leaves.

 

We were upstairs now, amongst the living quarters: a small kitchen, bathroom, a bedroom, and a balcony, overlooking the corner of the commercial street on which we’ve found ourselves situated. Then there was my uncle’s room. I didn’t know what to do with it since he had been gone for so long, but I kept it clean in case he was to ever return from London.

 

“Do you still have those dreams?” I asked her. “The ones with the river, I mean…”

 

At that time, in the circumstances I surrounded myself in - I was not free by any means. I was not free because I realised I’d never be free, and that was the kind of self-inflicted predicament I had put myself in. Why was I doing that to myself?

 

She said nothing and took another drag. Then I realised something, and I kind of regretted asking that. Those dreams were her own version of the predicament, a self-made trap consisting of thoughts and memories and images from some other-worldly abyss.

 

“Are you hungry?” I asked instead. “What do you feel like eating?”

 

“Oh, um…K gave you the fish he caught, didn’t he?”

 

“Ah, I thought you didn’t like it…”

 

“No way, I’ll like anything you make!” she said, leaving her cigarette sitting on the edge of the ash tray.

 

So that was the way things were, in the drowsy summer of 1983 I was cooking mackerels for a girl who didn’t like fish. I didn’t know if anyone could fall in love back then, but we made each other happy, and being happy meant being forgetful. Forgetting through the lenses of lucidity and awareness, and achieve complete departure from the present, from existence itself, then came what you’d call love.

 

But you must be wondering what she ate instead of fish. For one, she really liked calamari and crab meat, which I could get for a cheap price from the fish market near the port (I got along with the fisherman’s son in senior high). And when you go to the sea, there’s a kind of breeze unknown to the city. The wind blew with a newfound yet ancient attitude. Its canvas being the salt-tinted space, only bound by the distant horizon, the wind carried the rolling waves.

 

It was probably four years ago when a lukewarm breeze dragged us, Tazaki and I along the beach, “It hasn’t rained for some time, right?” he had asked me. In the distance, some kids were playing with sparklers, waving them in the air like wands. A man took a drag from his cigarette, the woman next to him stared intently into the ocean, the faint light of the sparklers still glimmering in her eyes. On the sand lay scatterings of dried seaweed, loose leaves, twigs, and the occasional cuttlefish bone, completely drained and beaten.

 

“The moon doesn’t look so bright either,” so I told him.

 

“When there’s no rain, the moon loses her light.”

 

The wind had stopped as he spoke, a palpable change in the air as it grew thinner, thinner until the spores of rainfall permeated the atmosphere. Here, it rained often, and it was rain who washed the moon anew and gave her clarity in light. When you gaze at the moon for a long time, maybe you get the feeling that you’re drifting into a new reality - the moon pulls you away into its light. Then you come back to the rest of the world, and sure enough, just about everything feels a little different. It’s just that I can’t really put a finger on it, and that’s probably why I’m doing this.

 

The place of visibility regarding the moon alternated between the frosted window in the bathroom, and the adjacent balcony. That night she was in the middle of a bath when she called out my name. Could you bring me a beer? she said. Or two, why don’t you come in here and have a drink with me?

 

I went down to the corner store and brought back two cold bottles. She was sitting in the tiny bathtub, under a coat of bubbles. A soft light fell onto her bare shoulder, she was blushing from the warmth, the few drops of sweat gathered on the tip of her nose, and well...I didn’t want to stare at her any longer - her, immersed in water, while I sat on the floor leaning against the wall. I turned and focused on the window instead, the static, diffused light creeping behind the glass, the moon of 1983. I wondered what Tazaki was up to now, what kind of cheesy songs he listened to, whether he had gotten hayfever…I looked back at her, I looked down into the depth of the bottle in my hand, are you here? The sound of her voice ran through my ears, smooth as wax, but I just kept falling. I kept sinking until the the pressure blocked my ears, the heaviness wound up and receded in sync with the ebb and flow of the sea. The gelatin sky above me melted into the contour lines of a map, rippling gently over the seawater. It was inescapable - the sea, there I was watching it in the darkroom, its waves scrambled in monochrome segments and its pale foam marbled into the black water. Inescapable, I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t. Will we see other again? Unfazed, she lit a cigarette and placed it between her lips, faint puffs of smoke rolled out of her mouth.

 

“So that’s the last night we spent together,” I told K. I had met him when I got a part-time job at a hotel two years ago.

 

“She left without a word?”

 

I shook my head, but I figured he didn’t see it. “She didn’t tell me anything,” I spoke.

 

“How long were you two together again?”

 

“Um, a year and a half.”

 

He let out a chuckle, for some reason I wanted to laugh too. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “But it is kind of a funny story.”

 

It seemed we were onto the steeper roads that swirled around the side of the hill, so he slowed down and kept both of his hands on the steering wheel. The chilly morning air wafted in as he drove. Maybe it was around seven, unbelievably cold and overcast, our corner of the forest was immersed in endless grey mist. The air became more humid as the road carried us into the clouds, baring left and right, the fading trees in my periphery swayed to the wind. The sense of disorientation was familiar, but just that. And unlike the first time, I wasn’t getting dizzy.

 

The man we were going to see lived deep in the forest - well, it was mainly K who wanted to see him, I just happened to tag along a few times. He’s someone with a special power, something that cannot be articulated, K would tell me (he used to be a superstitious guy). We were to go to the man’s residence in the morning, have a simple breakfast, followed by a “good, long talk”.

 

He found somewhere to park a little after eight. We continued on foot for another thirty minutes, and soon enough we found his place in the heart of the forest. After the man gave us something to eat, I left to walk around the trees while the other two talked. The house was built on one of the few flat grounds seen around the area, the rest of the grounds followed the incline of the hill. So I kept going up, waiting for something to happen, until I reached a narrow cliff and decided to sit by the edge, leaving the dense foliage behind. The fog from earlier did not clear away. I asked myself if I had truly escaped, right then and there. The wind howled in the distance and swept the leaves away, the cold air stirred thick in impending rain. Looking down, the cliff ran flat as though it was sliced off with a knife.

 

When I was alone like this, I used to...well, I just talked with _you_ in my head. Maybe I thought I knew you well enough to predict your responses, but that was years ago. As I sat on the edge of the cliff now, there was no voice in my mind, not a signal went through. I was still waiting for something to happen, but nothing came to light.

 

“He wanted me to let you know that you’ve lost your shadow,” K was telling me on the way back.

 

“He?”

 

“Yeah, the psychic old man. Your shadow has been fading over the last few visits, but today it’s completely gone.”

 

“You mean...I’m a ghost now or something?”

 

“I mean,” He paused as though he was really thinking hard at it. “Who knows. I imagine even as a ghost you still have a pathological need for human interaction.” He gestured for me to take a left at a crossroad.

 

“Even then, wouldn’t I haunt someone attractive? That must be why I’m always by your side these days, huh?” I caught him rolling his eyes.

 

“Speaking of which,” he spoke again. “I’m going to see some people tonight. You should come along if...you still feel like going out, y’know. I guess it’ll be like a, double date?”

 

“Double date?” Tazaki and I used to do that in high school, I recalled.

 

We were entering the city now, well after sunset. The traffic slowed down to a crawl - or even worse than that, it seemed no one had moved for twenty minutes. K got off the car, stretched, and smoked a cigarette, an endless chain of headlights traced the roads ahead. I glanced at the side mirror every so often, the faint light of the arched moon behind us. The thought returned once more - but how, I asked myself, how could I have thought that I managed to escape?

 

Deep down the kind of disappearance I longed for was a matter of the conscious, the ideal state being absence. Absence from all consciousness, including myself, to completely lose self identity just as a snake shedded its skin...now how was someone supposed to do that? But I guess that was the way things worked: if you don’t keep watch you lose your shadow just like that, but no matter how hard you tried, you can never truly escape.

 

One thing was for sure - if you looked really close, you can get a sense of how reality as a whole was shifting. Gradually it had showed itself - like instant film, the more you shook the photo paper, the clearer the image became. Reality began to look different as soon as light projected itself in a new way. Like a photo print that had too short of an exposure time, the appearance of the tangible world depended on the quality of its light. Some days it appeared grainier than usual, other times it saturated the tone of reality - just as rain made the leaves greener, the skies paler, the world operated on a premise of light and shadow.

 

For a little while I only believed in two things: light and death. The night I realised the light had seriously been altered, I was sitting inside a dim, public phone box, waiting for the rain to cease. Somehow K’s lighter had ended up in my pocket after we parted ways, so I lit a cigarette with it.

 

It was after eleven when the downpour fell out of the blue. Moonlight rippled across the fluid night sky, a thin layer of fog blooming over the glass, endless pitter-patter under the waves of my pulse. Despite having no one to call at this hour, I picked up the receiver and held it next to my ear.

 

“Raining?”

 

“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s pretty bad.”

 

“I can hear it.”

 

“Can you see the moon? Wherever you are…”

 

“No, not here,” you said. “Look at it for me, will you?”

 

“Well...it’s a crescent - like a cat’s pupil, thin and sharp...Have you seen my shadow, by the way?” I figured I should ask you. “It kind of disappeared.”

 

“Disappeared?”

 

“Yeah, you know how it goes.”

 

“I’ll try to keep an eye out for it, your shadow.”

 

“Thanks a lot.”

 

“What’re you doing now?”

 

“Not really doing anything,” I said. “I guess I can’t do a lot in my condition.”

 

“I thought as much.”

 

“And you?”

 

“I’m...far away. But I’m doing what I want to do.”

 

“Doing what you want to do? I’m happy to hear that...”

 

We stayed quiet for a moment. “Have you dreamed much lately?” you asked.

 

“Almost always.”

 

“Me too.”

 

The conversation ended right there. I pressed the receiver closer against my ear, but all I could hear was static. The rain naturally declined to a drizzle. I wondered if I had just woken up from a dream, but I wasn’t sure. The air felt heavy, gleams of the cityscape reflected on the rain-soaked pavement. Passing headlights slipped across shadows, the pearl-white moon easing on my eyes with her mellow light. As though a new reality had set upon the world, just about everything felt a little different. Hearing your voice through the receiver, slowly, I found myself sinking into the moonlight. Into a world of floating points, the intercept between light and shadow, a world submerged in soft focus...

 

ii

_Kazuo, it’s me. Sorry it took so long for me to write this, but I’m not really good at saying what I really want to say, and I guess you’re just the same. We used to talk a lot, remember? We talked about everything but the things we really cared about. You purposefully steered clear from that altogether, now that I think about it._

 

_Anyway, right now, I’m somewhere far away - we’re worlds apart, in fact, so I won’t ask you to write me back or anything (postage is expensive). I really like it here. I feel as though things have meaning and existence is tangible, and that’s the way it should be, right? Fish is really fish and mackerels live in the sea, I feel certain about that. You see, people exist here, not as metaphors or ideas but as real living beings. I can go to the sea and taste the salt in the water, in winter I hold out my hand and catch the snow. I think I’m pretty lucky to have come to this place. I’d love it if you could come too, but that’s up to you._

 

_The times I spent with you felt like a dream, even now I can’t tell if it was real. So that’s why I decided to leave on my own. Don’t worry about me though, and I won’t worry about you either, that’s probably the point of this. Well, I’m going to smoke now...so I guess this is goodbye. Did you change the lights in the darkroom, by the way?_

 

Summer was just around the corner when I got a letter from her, in 1985. I read it over and over again, until I just felt too lonely to think about her, as though I was lacking something integral. Where did it go, my shadow…

 

Then the moon of late June shone above his figure. I already knew - somehow, I just did. It has to be you, no mistake. Blurry, diffused lights spinning, the violet sky rained down stars like fall leaves. The fire beside us withered to a streak of smoke, light as whisper. Just as I told you that night, those days I was almost always having dreams, ones so close to reality that it was impossible to tell the two apart.

 

But it really was 1985: the sky, as viewed from the glass panel of a passing train was coated under a film of neon, a thin mist blurring one world into another. “Do you remember the moon?” I asked him, just as the moon that had been with us now dipped below the fringe of the window.

 

Miyoshi held a thoughtful look. “The moon was our shared secret,” he replied, as the rain continued to fall. He stood under the gleam of an opaque moon, beneath the rain, the perpetual rise and fall of my pulse...The two of us were at once caught in a limbo in between time.

 

Yet the only thing I could do now was smile. Sorry, I thought, but I just don’t have anything. I just don’t know what to think right now. I looked at Miyoshi, his placid eyes as ours met, a soft and familiar light rained on my senses.

 

“I’m afraid it’s a little late for business,” said Miyoshi, as he reached into the pocket of his coat to reveal a film canister, he grabbed my hand and placed it inside my palm and held it. “Keep it,” he said.

 

“Keep it?”

 

He let out a slight breath. “You lost it, didn’t you? This is yours, Kaminaga. It has always belonged to you.”

 

“And you found it for me?”

 

“Of course I did.”

 

A blissful kind of void dawned upon us, as though watching snowfall... _I can go to the sea and taste the salt in the water, in winter I hold out my hand and catch the snow._

 

“Say, do you want to visit the sea someday?” I asked him, and I managed to do so in the usual easy-going tone. “Whenever you come back here again, I mean…”

 

“I’d like that.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Can I call you this weekend?”

 

“Sure,” I said. “I got nothing to do on Sundays.”

 

Under the guise of the night Miyoshi let out a smile, probably. At least I liked to think that you were smiling that time, I just kind of missed it - that was all.

 

So I waited until Sunday, and on Sunday afternoon I was waiting alone in Jitsui’s office, trying to kill time by reading a paperback I found on his desk. When I got bored I looked out at the windows, the streets had finally dried up after bouts of summer rain.

 

“The film roll...did you open it?”

 

Jitsui’s office telephone rang not long later. Miyoshi was calling from Hong Kong, and even though he sounded calm, my intuition told me he was happy.

 

“Yeah. I did,” so I told him. “Thanks.”

 

“Good.” He let out a sigh of relief.

 

“Did you just finish work?”

 

“No, not yet. There’s another shoot later in the night.”

 

“Oh, how are you holding up?”

 

“It was hot today, and humid too. So they had to fix my makeup more than usual, otherwise I’m fine.”

 

“It’ll cool down during the night, right?”

 

“Hm, I hope so,” he said. “And you?”

 

“Me?”

 

“What have you been up to, Kaminaga?”

 

“Thinking about you, of course.”

 

“I...know that already. I meant your work.”

 

“Oh, uhm...Jitsui is proofreading it for the last time. And then they’re going to print it, next month?”

 

“You don’t know when it’s being published?”

 

“Hm...am I supposed to know those things?”

 

He sighed “I suppose it’’s out when it’s out.”

 

“I’m glad to hear your voice again,” I told him out of the blue.

 

“Kaminaga,” he spoke a moment later.

 

“Hm?”

 

“I just…missed your voice too.” He had gotten shy all of a sudden, probably. I kind of wished I could see what his face was like. “I was dreaming a lot lately,” he continued. “Of you.”

 

“Really?”

 

“I couldn’t see the figure very clearly, but I know it’s you.”

 

“Then? What did you do?”

 

He said nothing for a moment.

 

“Do you still take photos?”

 

“No, not anymore...I guess I haven’t felt the need to, why?”

 

I think we must have talked until sunset. I was getting curious as to what he was filming that time, since he seemed kind of excited about it. It turned out they had managed to score a sizeable budget to work on the film, which was taking place in Hong Kong. In the depth of my mind there lived some doubt regarding all of it - the idea of Miyoshi being an actor, I had never thought of him as the type to willingly express emotions, after all, but that was a silly way to think about things. Considering how someone like me ended up in the literature business...see, the whole ordeal was silly.

 

“You were always having useless thoughts,” Miyoshi had said to me a second later.

 

“Sometimes it gets sort of overwhelming,” I told him. “So I write and wait for myself to stop thinking, and after that I move on to wait for other things, and eventually...I guess I’m just waiting for the world to end.”

 

“So, you haven’t changed at all,” he said.

 

“Neither have you, Miyoshi.”

 

I looked out the window again. It was seven, a late sunset on the rise, pink petals bloomed across the sky.

 

“I think I have to go soon,” he said. “I’ll call you next week, same time.”

 

“Okay. In the meantime keep me in your dreams, how about that?”

 

“Hmph. I’ll see.”

 

“Well, talk to you you next time, Miyoshi.”

 

“Goodbye, Kaminaga.”

 

After he hung up, I left Jitsui’s office. While walking to the train station I sucked on a cherry flavoured candy, the sour taste in my mouth intensified under the rosy sunset, just red and sour all over the sky, my sky, my tongue. There were people all around me, each with their feverish glows and wills. Water sprouted out of a fountain, dispersed into microdroplets at its peak, the light of the mist saturated into an opaque lavender gleam. Something about water. The world of that Sunday afternoon seemed to operate with the sensibilities of free jazz, the thought came across my head. Sensibility. Sunset. Sour.

 

I looked at the light as it shifted past the hour, swept across the ocean floor, the light was the foam in the ocean of time, crashing onto the shore over and over again…I could see it, something like a shadow stretched out on the sand, faint outlines faded into air. Cruel. I turned off the fluorescents in the darkroom. With the film canister in hand I opened it and unrolled the film and transferred it to a developing tank, screwed the lid shut, then I wondered what to do with it. For a second it got so dark I couldn’t think, something out of comprehension stirred in the darkness. All of a sudden I just wanted to leave. But...where to?

 

The roll of film was no longer in my grasp, but I felt skin, with a smooth surface and sharp joints - your hand, cold and wet from the rain. Our fingers intertwined tightly. I wanted to speak, say anything, maybe call your name…

 

“Miyoshi?.”

 

“I’m listening,” he said through the telephone.

 

“You know...I dreamed about you too.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Um…”

 

“When can we see each other again?”

 

“Soon,” he said. “I promise.”

 

“You don’t have to…” I glanced at the sunset. “I’ll wait as long as you need.”

 

“Yeah, I know.”

 

“But your prefer the theatrics of a promise?”

 

“Hm...” he hummed passively. “A promise is a promise. I’ll call you again next week.”

 

“Okay. See you soon.”

 

Jitsui was starting to question why I was borrowing his office phone (rather, his boss’ office phone) for “personal matters” so often, but Sunday was his day off, so I didn’t think it was doing him any harm. Like a doctor’s prescription: for three months we talked on the phone, once a week, every Sunday afternoon until sunset.

 

After hanging up the sense of longing did not cease, the air grew thick and foreboding - it’s never good to be in a state of deep yearning, someone must have said that. You become fragile, like a straw waiting to be chewed on, a feeling even more vacant than losing a shadow. I just wanted to see him - that’s all it boiled down to. Feel his light, feel his shadow. Just the moon, you and me. Something told me he wanted the exact same, but I just couldn’t do anything. All of a sudden I just felt drained, restless. And so far away from you.

 

When I got home it was still light out. Sunlight poured in from the kitchen window in the shade of golden-brown stock powder. The far side of the sky was cloudy and pale like garlic skin. I cut off the stems of some needle mushrooms. Sliced a block of tofu off my hands. I thought about the leftover egg salad. The egg salad was my solitude: two hard-boiled eggs, a diced onion, mayonnaise, mustard, salt and pepper, dried parsley sprinkled on for good measure...I wondered how long I could last.

 

The train zipped past the rails. So it was 9pm, I raised the pack with one hand and flipped it open, a cigarette happened to slip in between my lips. The smoke etched into the air. The foam of the sea dissipated into the sand. Light brought itself through without precision. Miyoshi was right! the thought came across my mind then. Always too many useless thoughts…I looked at the moon. Isn’t there where I belong? The moon. Isn’t there where we should be? You and I.

 

iii

“So...you came back to Japan just to see me?”

 

I was supposed to be making a contact sheet for the negatives from Miyoshi’s roll, but I just kept looking at him. Even under the safelight I failed to keep my eyes off him, and I couldn’t stop talking, as usual.

 

“Well, it’s not like I have any other connections here.” He sounded shy. I didn’t know why, but that was how it seemed.

 

“That’s okay,” I reassured him. “I’ll be everything you need.”

 

He shot me a glare, one of disapproval, but a specter of amusement remained in his eyes. So I smiled at him. I picked the photo paper up from the fixer bath, rinsed it with water in the sink and wiped it dry. What came about was a black and white print consisting of twelve thumbnails.

 

“Well, it’s done,” I told him and turned on the light.

 

Miyoshi walked over to look at the print while I assembled the other negatives to make a second contact print. Only now did I realise these were taken in Japan, just a few days ago. I guessed they were concept shots for something he had in mind, seeing as months ago there was a film student who also sent me a roll of photos taken for a similar purpose.

 

“I did come to see you, you know,” he said after a while.

 

“Yeah, I know. You even promised...”

 

“It’s not just that,” he said, but seemed to have no intention of saying anything more. I didn’t think he needed to either, somehow I managed to fathom a tincture of what he was trying to get across.

 

The darkroom wasn’t really a pleasant place to be at unless you’ve grown used to it: the lack of ventilation, the vinegar-like smell, and of course the vague sense of calamity that intensifies in a gloomy place like this. I could see from my watch that it was almost six in the afternoon, and from my intuition that Miyoshi wanted to get some fresh air. So I asked him where he wanted to eat - there was a French restaurant in town, as he described, and I immediately knew which one he meant.

 

“But it’ll be booked up on a Friday night, right?”

 

“Possibly,” I said. “But um, maybe I can get us a table there?”

 

“How?”

 

I smiled. “Doesn’t matter how.”

 

It really didn’t matter. We went there, and I managed to charm an acquaintance who worked there into getting us a table. Nothing to dwell on, it was simple enough. I hadn’t been to the restaurant in a long time, let alone have eaten any kind of French cuisine. But Miyoshi was living in Paris, he told me. I like hearing him talk, I thought. “I like hearing you talk,” so I told him. He smirked a little in response. Understanbly he didn’t take my words too seriously, but I was serious. In fact, I had meant everything I had said to him. Well, whatever, I thought to myself. We were just killing time. You can’t be too serious about that.

 

“Well...my dream is to direct, one day.”

 

“Why’s that?” I had asked him.

 

He rested his chin on his palm and thought about it for a moment, it was all very elegant. I just watched.

 

“It’s normal to assume that acting brings the most attention...” he began. “But it’s really about disappearance. An actor is only a vessel for truth.”

 

“Truth?”

 

“Every film is about some kind of truth, whether subconscious or superficial.”

 

“Right,” I went along.

 

“You understand what I’m getting at, right?”

 

“Uh-huh, totally. I’m sure you’ll be great at directing, or...whatever else you choose to do, really.”

 

“Really, blind faith?”

 

I grinned. “No. Absurd, maybe, investive - even, but in no way blind. Or maybe I am blinded by _something_.”

 

He shook his head slightly. “Of course. You don’t believe in truths at all.”

 

“That’s kind of an ambitious statement, Miyoshi. Y’know, despite everything...there’re some things even I can’t discredit.”

 

“Then maybe it’s not so ambitious to say this: you’re still insufferable as ever.”

 

“Insufferable, huh.” I just chuckled.

 

I guessed the initial sentimental stiffness had washed away, and now we were back to our old ways. So it was 1985: we had both turned twenty-two, each with varying beliefs on the idea of truth - I guess you can put it like that.

 

“Is the beach nearby?”

 

He kind of surprised me when he asked to go to the sea after we ate. Yeah, I said. Very near.

 

I didn’t bother checking the time, but the sky had darkened to a velvety blue. The last rays of the sun were quickly rolling under the horizon. He probably didn’t feel like more small talk. We walked along the shoreline with only a few words spoken, bathed in some kind of dreamy ambience. The waves rose slowly, just as the moon did. I stole a few glances at Miyoshi, a faint light illuminated him, his eyes.

 

Further on the shore became rockier, the sand faded underneath the stream. We had sat on one of the smoother rocks, directing facing the sea. A familiar sentiment permeated in the thick air: the spray of the sea lightly glazed our skin, specks of moonlight drifted on the waves ahead.

 

“Kaminaga?”

 

“Hm?” I turned to look at him.

 

“Well…” He didn’t speak anymore for a while, but somehow I knew what he meant.

 

“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to say anything.”

 

He sort of readjusted his position, then we’re closer - closer than ever, so I put my arm around him, I felt his shoulders relax a little. He had let me hold him, wordlessly. Like some kind of a performance art piece, there we were, two figures transfixed in space. Our light, fused together, shadows intertwined into one: the truth, the only truth I had wanted. I could sense the warm glow of the moon showering down on us. We pressed our lips together. Dazed under the moonlight. Waves of longing crashed against the shore, my shore, my heart…

  
  


 

a note to you (and only you)

Even though I wrote this with you in mind, I’m kind of hoping you won’t read it. And if you’re reading it, I hope you don’t mind the name “Miyoshi” (at least I like it). I tried not to sound overly sentimental for your sake, but I think I failed, little by little. I don’t really know how much I’ve changed since then. Maybe I’m no longer the person I used to be, but a part of that person from that time always stayed with me, even until now. Anyway, I won’t tell you about this, but you’ll come across it someday. Probably.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! imagine having 2 brain cells and trying to write kaminaga who has..at least 4 brain cells in this au :') we tried ! i guess this is the accumulation of all the kmmy fics ive ever wanted to write. even the ones i started but never finished kfjds well here it is! 
> 
> thanks for reading again!! i guess roast me @unnagi on tumblr and @_unnagi on twitter lol


End file.
